Day: December 3, 2018

Meet Samantha Melody, a lively and happy third grader from Cochabamba, Bolivia. Who could imagine that just a few months ago, Samantha Melody was a very shy girl who didn’t have any friends in school, mainly a result of her difficulty pronouncing words and organizing her thoughts to be able to communicate her feelings to others.

Most children like Samantha Melody need encouragement to start opening up and be confident in social situations at school or in the classroom. However, in the past teaching methods in Bolivia had always been based on repetition and rote memorization. As a result, lessons were not fun for students – leaving them feeling bored and unmotivated to participate during school.

To help address this need, Save the Children trained teachers at Samantha Melody’s school on new teaching methodologies that not only make sure children learn in fun, interactive and innovative ways, but also take into consideration their emotions and feelings.

Ana Maria, her teacher, has worked closely with Samantha Melody since the start of the school year. She explains, “Our work starts by giving our students the necessary encouragement, kind words and patience. All of this is the key for their success.” She adds, “There isn’t any better satisfaction when a student like Samantha Melody starts learning and enjoys it.”

After participating in these trainings, Ana Maria worked hard to apply Save the Children’s literacy strategy in her classroom to motivate Samantha Melody and other struggling learners to enjoy reading. Through sponsorship, teachers learn to work with their students in participatory and game-like activities, like using reading aloud sessions and dramatizing the stories they read in class to make the books come to life, for example by using role play with the students or acting out characters’ voices in the story themselves. Reading cards are another tool provided by Save the Children, an exercise allowing children to pull important information from the story and write it on a card to deepen their understanding of the story and lesson.

These new approaches to teaching help children develop a love for learning and the necessary cognitive skills required to interpret what they read or hear, and to discuss it with their peers. All of this helped Samantha Melody develop her communication skills to be able to express herself with confidence.

After just a few months, this hard work has paid off. Today we find a more outgoing Samantha Melody who enjoys going to school every day. She not only has been able to make friends but also has started to love reading. She shares “I like the stories we read like The Four Corners of the Planet.”

Samantha Melody loves reading stories on her own and at school with her teacher and classmates.

Once she was able to finish her first few stories on her own, she was motivated to read more and more. As her skills improved, she was able to understand the words and began visualizing the fantasy worlds from her books with her imagination. She began to participate more and more in class. Samantha Melody concludes with a huge smile in her face, “I like being able to act, read stories and tell stories to my friends.”

What was the first book you remember really enjoying? Sharing a favorite story with your sponsored child is a great way to get to know them through letter writing. Consider writing a letter to your sponsored child today by visiting your online account, Sponsor.SavetheChildren.org/MyAccount

Yemen is currently experiencing the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. More than two-thirds of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance, with one-third in acute need. Of the 22.2 million people in need, more than five million are women of reproductive age, including an estimated half a million pregnant women. Before the current crisis escalated in March 2015, the average fertility rate was four children per woman and the lifetime risk of maternal death was one in sixty. In only 30 other countries do women face a greater chance of dying due to complications of pregnancy or during childbirth. Access to family planning is limited with only 20 percent of women using a modern contraceptive method and a high unmet need for contraception of 33 percent.

In the dire context in Yemen, Save the Children staff work tirelessly to support children and their families, and we are so pleased that our family planning team that includes was recognized for the work they do in the face of tremendous adversity. At the International Conference on Family Planning, our Yemen team was awarded an Excellence in Leadership for Family Planning Award for their “significant contributions to the family planning field.”

Since the beginning of 2013, and through the escalation of the crisis, our reproductive health program has reached nearly 60,000 new family planning users through support to 16 health facilities in Hodeida and Lahj Governorates through funding from private foundation. The program has also expanded access to long-acting reversible contraceptives (intrauterine devices and implants) that are more effective than other methods and are often a good choice in humanitarian settings where supply chains may be disrupted. This high quality work was leveraged to secure a new two-year award for Save the Children from the U.S. Agency for International Development to strengthen family planning services in Yemen.

In addition to the recognition of our Yemen team, other Save the Children teams from Egypt humanitarian response for Urban Refugees in Cairo and Mali were recognized for their excellent work by winning “best poster” awards during the conference. Our submission was one of the twelve (out of 325 applications) named a finalist of the Quality Innovation Challenge sponsored by the Packard Foundation for a concept to pilot a digital, interactive contraceptive decision-making tool for young people in acute humanitarian emergencies in Somalia and Yemen. Through 41 posters and presentations, our staff demonstrated the positive impact our family planning programs have on the lives of children, adolescent girls, women and their families around the globe.

To learn more about how family planning saves lives and our presence at the International Conference on Family Planning, click here.